Tuesday, December 22, 2009

HYPOCRISY!

I have been re-reading Doug Peacocks “Grizzly Years.” It is a wonderfully engaging book, written about his experiences filming and hiking with the Grizzly Bears of North America, as well as random flashbacks to Vietnam and how they f***ed him up, and what he did to try and fix himself. I could wax poetic about the eloquence, or the content, or the social value of the book. I'm not going to. Doug Peacock does not need me to review his book. It would be bullshit. So why am I mentioning this?

Because I have noticed, while reading this book, that I am a hypocrite. Well, apparently at least.

I support loggers and hunters (the good ones). I despise tree-spikers and green nazis. I am a sodbuster at heart, and a carpenter by trade. I make my subsistence on the rape and pillage. Trees are ruthlessly cut down in the forest, sliced into little bits, and used to make continually larger houses for people who can't afford them, until they all go bust and take us with them, simultaneously casting the housing market, the stock market, the lumber mills, paper mills, loggers, and builders into the dark, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. And yet, I find my solace in the open space, in hiking, camping, challenging four wheel drive roads, and other pursuits which require the open space which Doug holds so dearly and clearly wants me out of.

HYPOCRITE! I say one thing and do another. I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want the grizzer bears to return and flourish. I want to hike and not be eaten. If necessary, I will shoot to defend myself. But the important thing is this.

I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR MY ACTIONS.

If I am to be a hypocrite in someones eyes, I care not how they judge me. Though I may suffer under injustices, forced upon me by 'politically correct' points of view, I will not be their victim, and I will not play their game. I will speak my mind, and act as my conscience directs me, and not request forgiveness where I feel there is nothing to be absolved. I will continue to support hunting and the logging industry, as some of the finest and most caring outdoorsmen I know, that go to bat most often for the forests and its creatures, are loggers. Obviously this is not all of them.

To those that are only interested in the pillage and the money, in hunting for the kill and not for the experience of it, I hope beyond hope that you burn in this life, and I know you will in the next. I will not ask you to apologize either. If your conscience is content with clear cuts and destruction, act as you will and we shall oppose you. If you are content within yourself to kill a deer, without caring, and continue to hunt, transferring your tag to a bigger deer and leaving the old in a ditch, act as you will and we shall report you. Despite my aggressive tendencies regarding logging and hunting, I will not back you in actions which I find reprehensible, just as I will not support the groups which commit heinous acts in the defense of the deer and trees. So it makes me a hypocrite. So what. If you don't like it, counteract it. Just don't apologize for it. I think we've had enough of that crap.

I think Doug Peacock would rather see me in plain light than have me make insincere promises for my supposed wrongs. There is more respect due to an honorable opponent than a cowardly friend.